Alcohol and Balance in Pinot Noir - the World of Pinot Noir

WINE TALK
21

+1 Exactly what I thought when I first read that line!! [cheers.gif]

22

Great article. It helps explain my loss of affection for Ojai wines in the last several years and why I’ve become a fan of FP ( more accurately their associated winemakers).
I do laud those who make the kind of wine they like to drink themselves, but unless its the kind of wine I like to drink I’m not going to buy it.

23

I went to the World of Pinot Noir a couple of years ago and found the wines impossible to like. They seemed to have a sweetness derived from glycerol, something that I rarely come across in Burg or NZ Pinots, like Pinot on steroids…
Last month I went to the Otago Pinot Noir Celebration and came across the wines of Burn Cottage, a winery Ted Lemon is behind. Burn Cottage gave me the impression that Californian wines, like the wines I came across at the World of Pinot Noir, were now being made in Otago, the type of overblown wine I hope would never be made in NZ. I mentioned this to a couple of good local winemakers and they assured me they would not be moving toward this style, I was relieved…

24

I thought the panel discussion was more even-tempered (and good natured) than your take on it, Nate.

25

Surely revealing to read before I kick off my work day. Someone above got to the point before I did: for me, if I want to keep my palate honest and remove the bias about what ‘is’ right and what ‘isn’t’, drink more wines blind and bagged. This is the best way to see where wine honesty treads, and for me on a # of occasions, have rendered true balance in a wine(or more often, a lack of balance) without regard to the bias that may be driven by the wine’s label.

26

quoting panel member M. Brown:

I can’t drink 16% Pinots, but its also worth pointing out that > a wine at 13% can be hot> .

Quoting Zenmaster:

I don’t think anything but the most retarded physiologically unripe Pinot Noir from perhaps lousy thin/insipid winemaking, Canadian or German/Alsatian vintage, could be described as ‘hot’ @13%.

M.Brown may have had an epiphany w/'92 Allen PN-W-S, but as far as that wine goes, had it 1/2 dozen times in the mid-late/ 90’s and I can say the '92 vintage style of W-S was my least favorite, other than the very light/leaner '93 vintage (exception being the '93 Summa-Coastlands Burt poured for me in '97? which was superlative for the vintage, powerful).

Alder certainly put a lot of work into his blog post which took a lot of work. It is hard to accurately quote people in a seminar like that but I think he did a great job. Just to set the record straight on what I said regarding the above quote, it was the 1991 WS Allen Vineyard Pinot Noir not the 1992. I also said that a wine IN the 13% range could be hot not a wine AT 13%. I have had wines in the 13’s that seemed hot.

I had a great time on the panel and appreciated everyone’s views. That is what makes the world of wine so fantastic. Many different wines made by people who interpret things differently leading to a broad palate of wines which the consumer can choose from.

27

Rather interesting read, I thought. The usual culprits, like Adam, there to [stirthepothal.gif]
Rajat made a good point that balance in a wine is more (much more) than just the alcohol level. Since
the alcohol is required by law to be stated on the label; I think way/way to many folks are focused on that #
as defining the balance in the wine. A point Adam makes so well. If the pH/TA were also stated on the label,
I highly doubt that people would find that # much use in defining balance in a wine. Balance is something
that you taste w/ your palate…not something you can measure w/ a #.
How often do you, when you’re tasting thru a wine tableau, light up and proclaim “This wine is in perfect balance”.
I know I don’t. About the only time “balance” pops into my mind whilst I’m tasting wines is if something is out
of whack…out of “balance”. Too much/too little tannins; too much/too little acid; too much/too little RS; sometimes
even…gasp…too much/too little alcohol.
How bout this as a proposal. Every wine should be labeled with a “balance #”. BN=100 means the wine is in perfect
balance. BN=50 means the wine is a bit out of balance. BN=0 means the wine is totally out of balance.
Certainly makes sense to me.
Tom

28

It would be fun to convene a tasting panel of Berzerkers who are most strident opponents of riper and higher alcohol pinot, and do a blind tasting of a bunch of California pinots at varying alcohol levels to see how well they can or cannot discern it. Of course, they would be taking a considerable risk and would have to have the humility and good nature that Rajat Parr demonstrated. Maybe it’s happened already – I do know there was that one blogger who took the challenge with Adam Lee and was duly humbled.

It would also depend on which wines you selected – you could certainly pick wines with the goal of making the differing alcohol levels more obvious, and you could pick wines which tended to obscure the differences in alcohol levels.

You’d also have to deal with the imprecise nature of alcohol labeling (i.e. the alcohol levels may vary considerably from what is on the label for many wines) – I guess in the ideal world, you would test them in the lab instead of going off the label.

29

Good points all around. Two things stood out to me.

That is interesting in that '97 is often said to be the year when there was a large change in Napa Cabs as well.

This point has been made before but its worth saying until people hear and believe it. People make huge decisions about one number that is legally mandated to be included on the label yet don’t want wine made by the numbers. If only it were so easy that I could read one number off a label and decide whether it was balanced or not.

30

The more numbers we add to labels, the more things we begin to accept going out of bounds. We have already gotten our heads around 14-16% alc. We would just begin to accept ph levels over 4 if that gets on the bottle. Same with Brix, TA et al.

If we think the California style of heavy extract/ concentration higher alcohol is actually in balance, we should find some older bottles and taste their evolution.

31

Awesome reading and great continued discussion here. This is just the sort of back-and-forth that results in greater understanding of truth. The simple fact of the matter is, Pinot doesn’t have to be as simplistic and bright line as we sometimes make it. We don’t like one-dimensional wines, so why would style be a matter of yes-no, right-wrong, black-white? This understanding about balance, how California Pinot has helped explore our notions of balance, and helped develop more and better wines.

To take two examples from posters in this thread:

  1. It’s fascinating to see how Siduri Pinots have evolved from 2002 through 2009. The alcohol levels certainly have changed, and I think there are fewer 15%+ alcohol wines in the lineup, but the really exceptional thing – and this is something I think you really see pronounced in the appellation wines across the board – is the greater complexity and balance in the wines. The mouth feel is different. In many wines from 2002-2004, I felt like there was usually an element that stuck out, seemingly out of place. Perhaps too much acidity or the fruit got a touch flabby or some heat on the finish. But the balance in these wines from 2005-2009 has been exquisite.

  2. With Kosta Browne wines, it has been equally interesting to track the improvement of balance. I drank 2003 and 2004 appellation wines quite young – they just didn’t seem to have the acidity to hold or the ability to hold off the back-end heat for long. I operated under that assumption through the 2006 vintage … when I drank the appellation wines young, but never found them as fully satisfying as I had in the past. It made me scratch my head. But then I realized, with a couple lingering bottles, that I hadn’t waited long enough. That is, there was a difference sense of balance in the wines, and I had to be more patient to get the flavor profile I had expected. Now, to be sure, in 2007 and 2008, the KB wines are still full of that bold fruit profile they’re famous for, but the acidity is much improved, and there is noticeably less risk of heat and bitterness on the finish. The 2007 RRV is probably the best example – 14.2%, but it’s got all the hallmarks of that bold KB fruit.

Thumbs up to both these winemakers – and the many others – who are willing to constantly reassess what they’re doing and help continue the evolution of New World Pinot.

The thing that happened in the popular discourse, though, with California Pinot was that alcohol levels became the target the past couple years. But that wasn’t the issue at all. It was merely one possible (and frequent) symptom in a larger problem of needing better balance in many wines. The big, forward fruit can be a nice, obvious characteristic, but that can come at the expense of more subtle nuance and balance. Balance really is the game. You don’t turn the dial up to 11. You have to find the place at which all the elements – because fruit isn’t the only one – come into harmony. And fortunately there are exceptionally talented and dedicated winemakers who are willing to experiment with this and come up with different versions of the “best” expression of California Pinot.

32

But you are grouping a lot of things together there. You seem to equate extraction, concentration and alcohol. Those are three very different things. If we are talking about the subject of the thread and discussion, then paying attention to the alcohol number is what is in order. I’d be more interested in knowing real percentages from old world wines that have a track record of aging and see how the numbers line up with the longevity of past vintages going back in terms of decades. That would be instructive to wines from anywhere I would think.

33

This is my favorite bit from Jim Clendennan:

But just do not ever walk up to me and tell me bigger, darker, and heavier connotes anything but a stylistic choice.

In the absence of other information, I just won’t buy a pinot noir that is over 14%. The chances of me liking it are slim.

I don’t know how that can be construed as unreasonable or illogical.

34

Are you sure its not 13.8%? Or maybe 14.2%?

35

Nope. It could be 13% for all I know.

Doesn’t change a thing.

Sure, it’s a generalization. So are vintage generalizations. As long as you understand the granularity you are working with, you can see how well it works for you. As a strategy when approaching an unknown or little known wine, it has worked out great.

36

They are three different things, but certainly highly correlated. It would be disingenuous to imply otherwise.

37

Not Pinot Noir, but Piedmont Nebbiolo, Alsatian Riesling, Austrian Riesling and GV, Wines of the Southern Rhone, Wines from Montalcino, and Sauternes all regularly come in at 14+ and these regions make wines that age and evolve beautifully. I’m sure they are out there, but I’m having trouble remembering a higher alcohol Pinot Noir that I didn’t find heavily extracted and concentrated as well.

Another data point I’d offer is that 2006 in Oregon offered some of the most fruit forward, high alcohol wines in recent memory from there. Many discussions on this board are pessimistic at best about cellaring those wines even from producers with a great track record.

If we are only discussing the listed alcohol content, I guess I don’t understand the need to switch labels et al just to get a room full of people to view a wine that is 15.2% as a wine that is 13.8%. What was the perception of the actual lower alc wine? That it was out of balance?

38

Actually, they are not highly correlated because they are three different things. It would be false to assume they do.

  • Alcohol comes from the amount of fermented sugar in the grapes.
  • Extraction comes from the amount of skin contact.
  • Concentration is a nebulous term in regards to wine which I’m sure has somewhat different meanings to different people but personally it has zero correlation with alcohol to me. It is more about the amount of fruit within the liquid. Low concentration would be watery. High concentration would would be denser with no regards to fleshiness or extraction. Wines for instance with a track record for aging from good vintages would have high concentration across styles to me.
39

Correlation and causality are two different concepts. Items can be statistically correlated (which is up the statistician-Nathan’s alley), but not causal nor even have an easy-to-see link between the items.

40

[welldone.gif]

Well said.